Things that helped make me more social

Posted on Dec 16, 2014 in English Posts | 2 comments

I find that after many years of being mostly shy-ish and uncertain, I’m starting to – still not consistently, but considerably more often – act confidently and competently in social situations. There seem to have been a bunch of things that have affected this.

One is that anything that makes me feel generally better also tends to help me out in social situations: if I’m in a generally positive state of mind, that works as a partial cushion against social anxiety. I think that the antidepressant prescription I got half a year ago has contributed to that, both directly and indirectly. Directly by making me feel more generally confident and happy, and indirectly by helping me achieve more things in my life, which causes extra confidence that carries over to social situations. However,  I was definitely also making progress in being social before I got the medication.

I think that a large part of my feeling of social discomfort, as well as the feeling that I can’t come up with anything to say, has been because I’ve felt the need to come up with something interesting to say. One useful bit of advice was in Keith Johnstone’s book Impro, aimed at giving advice for improv theatre, which advises against trying to appear original:

Many students block their imaginations because they’re afraid of being unoriginal. […]

The improviser has to realize that the more obvious he is, the more original he appears. I constantly point out how much the audience like someone who is direct, and how they always laugh with pleasure at a really ‘obvious’ idea. Many people asked to improvise will search for some ‘original’ idea because they want to be thought clever. They’ll say and do all sorts of inappropriate things. If someone says ‘What’s for supper?’ a bad improviser will desperately try to think up something original. Whatever he says he’ll be too slow. He’ll finally drag up some idea like ‘fried mermaid’. If he‘d just said ‘fish’ the audience would have been delighted. No two people are exactly alike, and the more obvious an improviser is, the more himself he appears. If he wants to impress us with his originality, then he’ll search out ideas that are actually commoner and less interesting. I gave up asking London audiences to suggest where scenes should take place. Some idiot would always shout out either ‘Leicester Square public lavatories’ or ‘outside Buckingham Palace’ (never ‘inside Buckingham Palace’). People trying to be original always arrive at the same boring old answers. Ask people to give you an original idea and see the chaos it throws them into. If they said the first thing that came into their head, there’d be no problem.

An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He’s not making any decisions, he’s not weighing one idea against another. He’s accepting his first thoughts. How else could Dostoyevsky have dictated one novel in the morning and one in the afternoon for three weeks in order to fulfill his contracts?

The same rule is worth applying to conversations: stop worrying about whether the thing that comes to my mind is particularly interesting or witty or anything, but rather just go ahead and say it. Conversation is basically just people saying whatever random things that come to their mind anyway, it usually doesn’t have a deep purpose beyond that.

I also got a lot of valuable advice from the book “The Charisma Myth“. Possibly the most valuable bit was the notion that I actually don’t need to say much in order to be perceived as someone who’s pleasant to have around in a conversation – if I’m interested in and focused on the person that I’m talking with, then that’s going to be automatically reflected in my facial expressions and body language in a way that the other person is going to pick up on and enjoy. That realization alone was enough to take off some of my worries about not being interesting enough. The book’s also got a number of exercises that help you get into a mental state where others are more likely to enjoy your presence. One of my favorites, which is both easy and instantly effective (for me at least), is the “angel wings” exercise:

…in any interaction, imagine the person you’re speaking to, and all those around you, as having invisible angel wings.

This can help shift your perspective. If even for a split second you can see someone as a fundamentally good being, this will soften and warm your emotional reaction toward them, changing your entire body language. So give it a try: as you’re walking around, or driving around, see people with angel wings walking and driving. It’s worth imagining yourself with wings, too. Imagine that you’re all a team of angels working together, all doing your wholehearted best. Many of my coaching clients (even hardened senior executives) have told me how extraordinarily effective this visualization has been for them. They can instantly feel more internal presence and warmth, and I can see a great increase in the amount of both presence and warmth that their body language projects.

Another tip from the book that I’ve found useful, related to the earlier “don’t try to be interesting” advice, is that when in conversation, I shouldn’t let my thoughts get sidetracked into a mode where I’m thinking about the next thing I want to say. Instead, I should just keep my attention and focus on what the other person is saying and let them feel that my full attention is on them, and concentrate on absorbing their words. This seems to actually make it easier to come up with things to say.

Then there’s just general success spirals: once I had these pieces of advice, I started applying and practicing them, and once I’d had some with success with them I got more confident, which helped me be more successful on the next time, and so on. I seem to also get confidence boosts from various things like wearing nice clothes, as well as from wearing my cat ears: the ears are unusual enough that random people on the street will sometimes give me compliments on them, which is nice for my self-esteem. They also make it easy for people to start conversations with me.